Description
Today in many industries it is common to work in virtual teams. At the same time companies must innovate to retain their market share and stay in the market. One possible method to come up with innovations is Design Thinking. However, this method is originally not intended to be used in a virtual team. The objective of this research is to provide a guideline on how to practice Design Thinking in a remote setup, thus travel expenses and planning efforts could be saved. This guideline is based on the media synchronicity theory which is applied to the process of Design Thinking. As a result, it is deduced that the diverging phases in Design Thinking are best supported with asynchronous media. In contrast to the converging phases which are supported best by synchronous media. These results could be used by practitioners to choose the best fitting media for each phase.
Application of Media Synchronicity Theory to Creative Tasks in Virtual Teams Using the Example of Design Thinking
Today in many industries it is common to work in virtual teams. At the same time companies must innovate to retain their market share and stay in the market. One possible method to come up with innovations is Design Thinking. However, this method is originally not intended to be used in a virtual team. The objective of this research is to provide a guideline on how to practice Design Thinking in a remote setup, thus travel expenses and planning efforts could be saved. This guideline is based on the media synchronicity theory which is applied to the process of Design Thinking. As a result, it is deduced that the diverging phases in Design Thinking are best supported with asynchronous media. In contrast to the converging phases which are supported best by synchronous media. These results could be used by practitioners to choose the best fitting media for each phase.